Recaps

Remembrancer Rowell McKane witnessed Amatla’s forces receive advanced armor, weapons, and vehicles as the planet prepared for war against the traitor Legions. Ultramarines also donned new auramite armor, and Rowell later recorded that they had become the Custodians of the Five Hundred Worlds when the Battle of Amatla began.

• Rowell McKane woke for reveille and wrote about rumors of the traitor Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions and the destruction of Calth.
• The captain ordered the 627th Company to collect new carapace armor, lasguns, volkite guns, and power packs.
• Rowell examined the advanced armor’s alloy, life-saving drugs, communications systems, helmet sensors, and servo-skull connection.
• The company received Chimera transports and saw Leman Russ tanks, Land Raiders, Basilisks, and Emperor’s Blade super-heavy tanks arrive.
• Ophio Cassandra welcomed Ultramarines bearing new auramite armor, and one-tenth of the Astartes on Amatla changed into it.
• When the Battle of Amatla erupted, Rowell wrote that the Astartes had become the Custodians of the Five Hundred Worlds.

Orfeo received the long-delayed report that Captain Lysimachus Sestus and his allies had destroyed the Word Bearers' Fussilade Abyss before it could attack Macragge, though all the loyalists involved had died. The news inspired Amarat's defenders to face the approaching enemy with renewed courage.

• Orfeo learned from an astropathic transmission that the missing Fist of Macragge had warned the Five Hundred Worlds about the Fussilade Abyss.
• A second message revealed that Captain Lysimachus Sestus had led a fleet to find the Word Bearers' ship, which carried psychic void mines and planned to attack Macragge.
• Orfeo announced that Sestus, nine battle-brothers, Skall, Bringal, the Fifteenth Legion warriors, Rear Admiral Kaminska, and their fleet had perished destroying the Fussilade Abyss.
• Orfeo recounted how Sestus and his allies boarded the enemy ship and sabotaged its plasma reactor, preventing its assault on Macragge.
• The report spread across Amarat, and Lowell wept as the citizens and soldiers took heart and vowed to defend the Five Hundred Worlds.

Ophio prepared Amatla’s people and defenses for an expected enemy assault while managing scarce Ultramarines forces and new weapons. When a psychic storm disabled astropathic communication, he confirmed that the enemy had arrived and ordered all forces into combat readiness.

• After Sestus encouraged them, Amatla’s people prepared to resist as supplies and reinforcements continued arriving despite the Warp storms.
• Ophio rejected Captain Bloom’s repeated request to lead a boarding assault, choosing to defend Amatla with its fortifications and ground-based weapons.
• Ophio reviewed Guilliman’s reinforcements and learned that Lox had converted mining vessels into small, dangerous disintegration-armed craft.
• Ophio ordered his adjutant to find pilots willing to operate the new vessels despite the risks.
• A psychic storm overwhelmed the astropaths and cut off outside communication, so Ophio ordered all forces to enter combat status.

The Word Bearers and World Eaters arrived at Amattra with overwhelming force, led by two Abyssal Fury-class warships, and battered the system’s defenses. After the Imperial fleet’s desperate charge failed to stop their advance, traitor Space Marines began landing on the planet.

• The rebel fleet emerged from the Warp at the edge of the Amattra System, led by the Three Sacred Litanies and the Blessed Lady.
• Amattra’s defense network opened fire, but the two Abyssal Fury-class warships endured the bombardment and destroyed the system’s star forts.
• The Imperial fleet charged the rebels, and its concentrated fire briefly overloaded the Blessed Lady’s void shields and struck its cathedral.
• Lorgar ordered his warriors to seize Amattra as an offering, while Erebus regarded Kor Phaeron’s empty seat with satisfaction.
• The rebel fleet broke through the defenses and entered low orbit, where shield domes rose over the planet.
• World Eaters and Word Bearers descended onto Amattra in Dreadclaw drop pods.

Lorgar led the Shadow Crusade toward its goal of cutting off the eastern Imperium, while Amatara’s defenders fought overwhelming Word Bearers and World Eaters forces. The defenders sent a pack of miniature assault craft against the enemy transports and warships, and the surviving pilots charged the Conqueror.

• Lorgar dismissed the Emperor as a false god and resolved to save Angron while advancing the Ruinstorm with further sacrifices.
• Amatara’s defenders faced an invasion force estimated at more than one hundred thousand, and Ophion ordered the Rim Watch Legion to prepare for the enemy Titans.
• The commander launched miniature assault craft to attack the descending pods and enemy transports.
• The craft evaded enemy fire and used disintegration beams to destroy transports and damage warships, killing many aboard before they could land.
• The surviving pilots rallied and charged the Conqueror, shouting, “For the Emperor! For Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds!”

Lotara ordered the Conqueror’s crew to counter Ultramarine boarding craft and awakened the World Eaters’ Dreadnoughts. Locke discovered that his Legion had betrayed the Emperor, then protected his fellow warriors from an antimatter blast that crippled the ship and destroyed his own body.

• Lotara sent Devalus and the third-line troops to intercept the boarding craft, then ordered the Dreadnoughts awakened.
• The Techmarines roused Locke, a former War Hounds Legion master, and told him the Ultramarines were boarding the Conqueror.
• Locke learned that the World Eaters had joined the Warmaster’s rebellion and followed the Techmarines to a crashed craft.
• Locke found the craft empty of Ultramarines, with only dying mortal pilots inside, and shielded the World Eaters when one pilot triggered an antimatter blast.
• The blast crippled the Conqueror and destroyed Locke’s Dreadnought, leaving him alive with a broken heart as he watched the surviving World Eaters.

Angron prepared to lead the assault on Amattra after Lorgar redirected his rage toward vengeance. On the planet, Orpheo organized its defense and trusted Ultramar Auxilia Company 627 to hold the first enemy wave while reinforcements gathered.

• Angron dismissed the World Eaters fighting aboard the flagship and agreed to attack Amattra after Lorgar invoked his desire for vengeance.
• Orpheo learned that every wolf pack had been lost and that enemy forces had begun landing on Amattra.
• Orpheo ordered Ultramar Auxilia Company 627 to hold Position 267 while more enemies entered the encirclement.
• Company 627’s commander directed the soldiers’ fire and called in artillery support against the advancing World Eaters auxiliaries and Astartes.
• Twelve upgraded Basilisk artillery pieces struck the attackers, who continued charging through the bombardment.

The 627th Company used upgraded weapons and coordinated targeting to kill two World Eaters, though one auxiliary soldier lost an arm in the fighting. Chronicler Rowell McKen documented the victory from the frontline bunker, where the captain recognized his reckless determination as courage.

• A World Eaters veteran charged the trench but was incinerated by a veteran's charged melta gun before he could break into the position.
• A second World Eater attacked an auxiliary soldier and severed his arm, but the captain killed the attacker with his melta gun and shoulder cannon.
• Medics treated the wounded soldier, and the captain warned the company to stay alert and heed the servo-skull warnings.
• Rowell McKen recorded the 627th Company's feat and documented the battlefield from the bunker despite the captain's objections.
• The captain admired Rowell's foolish determination to witness the front line and saw it as the courage that drove Ultramar's people into battle.

The 627th Company of the Ultramar Auxilia held off repeated World Eaters assaults with upgraded weapons, surveillance, and coordinated firepower. When the World Eaters broke through another position and their numbers surged, Ophio judged the moment had come to act.

• The 627th Company repelled five World Eaters assaults, while avian servitors and coordinated volkite fire thwarted their attacks.
• The World Eaters brought a Sicaran forward, but the 627th Company’s concealed Stormlord and other weapons devastated the attackers following it.
• Ophio recognized that the World Eaters’ disorder and contempt for mortal troops had helped the Auxilia inflict heavy losses.
• The World Eaters shifted their attack to another position, where more than a thousand of them broke through and widened the breach.
• Ophio waited as the World Eaters’ numbers climbed past two thousand, then declared that the time had come.

Kharn and the World Eaters charged into the Ultramarines’ disciplined shield wall, expecting to crush their cousins but finding the formation nearly impossible to break. After an Ultramarine shield strike badly wounded Kharn, he realized the Ultramarines had lured them into a trap as their leader ordered a counterattack.

• The Regent of Amatara led the Victorious Guard to the front while the Ultramarines entered the battle against the World Eaters.
• Kharn led World Eaters through mortal auxilia defenses and dismissed the Amatarans’ resistance as futile.
• Kharn’s force charged the Ultramarines’ shield wall, but the formation held firm and inflicted heavy losses.
• An Ultramarine stopped Kharn’s attempt to bypass the wall and struck him with a shield, cracking his helmet and drawing blood.
• Kharn recognized that the Ultramarines had set a trap as their leader ordered them to advance and counterattack.

Khârn and the World Eaters were trapped and devastated by Orpheo’s Ultramarines, whose adamantine armor and superior coordination overwhelmed them. As Khârn faced defeat, a Dreadclaw landed beside him and delivered a giant who mocked the fallen World Eaters.

• Khârn recognized that the Ultramarines wore unfamiliar armor and realized they had lured his force into an ambush.
• Orpheo’s more than one hundred Ultramarines in adamantine armor counterattacked, cut down the World Eaters, and closed their encirclement.
• Khârn’s weapons failed against the Ultramarines’ armor and shields, and bolter fire wounded him until he fell to his knees.
• Khârn recalled Angron’s past and the War Hounds who had charged their primarch before the World Eaters around him were killed.
• A Dreadclaw crashed down beside Khârn, forcing the Ultramarines back as a giant stepped out and called the World Eaters weak and foolish.

Angron fought off the Ultramarines surrounding him, but their adamantium armor and concentrated fire wounded and overwhelmed him. He escaped to the World Eaters' landing zone with Khârn, while the Regent ordered the Ultramarines to proclaim that they had routed him.

• Angron kicked the wounded Khârn into a drop pod to protect him, then charged the surrounding Ultramarines with Bloodfather and Bloodson.
• Angron's chainaxe chipped against an Ultramarine's adamantium armor, and the Ultramarines closed in with plasma guns and meltaguns.
• Angron's Butcher's Nails erupted in pain, and he battered Ultramarines with his fists and an unconscious warrior's armored body.
• The company captain stabbed Angron in the back, but Angron grabbed him and threw him away as artillery fire approached.
• Angron seized Khârn from the drop pod and fled toward the World Eaters' landing zone, escaping the Ultramarines.
• The Regent ordered the Ultramarines to return to the defensive line and broadcast that Angron had fled.

Lox completed Virgin Star’s transformation into the Virgin Battle Planet, a heavily armed mobile weapon built to aid Guilliman’s forces at Amattra. Guilliman ordered it into the Warp, beginning its journey toward the coming battle.

• Guilliman and Lox watched gravity generators compress Virgin Star into a dense, spherical battle planet.
• Lox and the Adeptus Mechanicus finished installing engines, weapons, command systems, and a Warp engine, while Guilliman insisted that humans retain control of the planet.
• Lox explained that the battle planet’s neutron cannon could devastate enemy ships but required more than twenty-four hours to cool down after firing.
• Lox assured Guilliman that repeated short-range Warp jumps would let the battle planet withstand the storms on the route to Amattra, though they would exhaust its navigators.
• Guilliman ordered the Virgin Battle Planet to depart, and it entered the Warp carrying Astartes, mortal troops, vehicles, and Titans.

Guilliman and Lox pursued the battle planet with the Red Alert, and Guilliman declared that Ultramar had mastered planetary jump technology. On Amattra, Ophio exploited a traitor command center’s destruction but grew wary of the enemy’s unexplained inactivity as he waited for reinforcements.

• Lox told Guilliman where the battle planet would next emerge, and the Red Alert jumped ahead to intercept it.
• Guilliman celebrated the new planetary jump technology before the Red Alert and battle planet jumped toward Amattra.
• An Ultramarine captured in adamantium armor overloaded its antimatter furnace at the traitor headquarters, destroying the command center.
• Ophio seized the resulting confusion to kill more than two thousand Astartes, over a million traitor auxiliaries, and four Ravager-class Titans.
• Ophio noted Angron’s absence and the enemy’s lack of major attacks, and worried that the outnumbered Ultramarines were facing a hidden trap.

Lotara sought Lhorke’s counsel about the World Eaters’ faltering war and Angron’s decline, while the Conqueror grew increasingly sinister. Kharn joined them and condemned Angron as a slave to the Butcher’s Nails, ending with the call for greater strength.

• Lotara explored the damaged, uncanny Conqueror and awakened Lhorke to ask about the Legion’s future.
• Lhorke compared the Ultramarines’ transformation under Guilliman with Angron’s failure as a primarch.
• Lotara admitted that the Butcher’s Nails were destroying Angron and that the Mechanicus could not remove them without killing him.
• Kharn emerged from the darkness, called Angron a slave and a monster, and said the World Eaters needed greater strength.

Argel Tal and Raum performed a ritual to give Khârn greater strength, but the Warp creature they summoned failed to form a symbiotic bond with him. Khârn devoured the creature, glimpsed the vast will tormenting his father, and emerged with enough power to face his opponent.

• Khârn removed his armor as Argel Tal and Raum opened a fissure in the Warp and summoned a creature to bond with him.
• The Warp creature entered Khârn, but their fusion faltered, and it tried to seize control of his body.
• Khârn fought the creature as his body mutated, while a psychic shriek tore through the Conqueror and Argel Tal shielded Lotara and the Dreadnought.
• The daemon Kam cried that a powerful being had long watched Khârn’s human friend, and Khârn began devouring the Warp creature instead of joining with it.
• Khârn saw the eye that had watched his father and understood that a vast will had tormented him alongside the Butcher’s Nails.
• Khârn suppressed his bloodlust, mastered his new strength, and prepared to end the fight.

As the Shadow Crusade devastated Amatara, Orpheo prepared a strike against Angron or Lorgar while Khârn displayed terrifying new powers on the battlefield. Khârn faced a squad of Ultramarines as the unseen force within him urged him to kill them for greater strength.

• Orpheo received reports of heavy losses and learned that Angron and Lorgar had arrived on Amatara, then ordered the Librarius to prepare for a decapitation strike.
• Khârn and Argel Tal stormed Amataran positions, where Argel Tal killed soldiers with a Custodian spear and escaped a grenade blast.
• Khârn charged through a Sicaran tank’s autocannon fire, tore open its armor, and slaughtered its crew.
• After hanging the crew’s heads from his waist, Khârn felt an unseen presence approve of his slaughter and demand more blood and skulls.
• Argel Tal grew uneasy about Khârn’s unnatural strength, while a squad of Ultramarines challenged him and the voice urged him to kill them.

Khârn and Angelta fought through the Ultramarines as the rebels and Ultramarines escalated their battle across Amattra. Khârn resisted the unseen power urging him to offer a blood sacrifice, leaving the battle still raging.

• Khârn charged the Ultramarines’ shield wall with his empowered chainaxe, while Angelta used daemonic fire and his guardian spear to kill and wound several Ultramarines.
• Khârn recognized that the Ultramarines had deployed an unusually large force, and the World Eaters and Word Bearers joined the fighting from the rear.
• The rebel commanders celebrated their numerical advantage and prepared to exploit the Ultramarines’ deployment, while both sides committed heavy weapons and war machines.
• Khârn tore through the Ultramarines’ defenses and killed more than thirty of them as his speed and bloodlust grew.
• Khârn heard an unseen presence urging him to say “Blood sacrifice,” but he refused and struck himself with his chainaxe to resist its control.

Orpheo used himself as bait while searching the battlefield for Angron, the World Eaters’ Primarch. As Khârn and Orpheo fought a prolonged duel, Angron finally emerged and charged at the Regent.

• Orpheo’s swordsmanship caught Khârn’s attention, and the two warriors charged at each other across the battlefield.
• Orpheo fought Khârn while searching for Angron, dismissing Khârn as a distraction from his real target.
• Angrath tried to reach Khârn but was held back by the Victors guarding Orpheo.
• Khârn and Orpheo battled for more than an hour as other Astartes kept clear of their duel.
• Angron charged at Orpheo, appearing just as the Regent had been waiting for him.

Angron pursued Ophio through Amatla’s ruins while the Victorious Army sacrificed itself to hold the Primarch in place. Ophio teleported back to the battle lines as the soldiers prepared to destroy Angron with an overloaded antimatter furnace.

• Angron hurled Khârn aside and charged after Ophio, who retreated under the Victorious Army’s protection.
• The Ultramarines delayed Angron as he fought through them and pursued Ophio into the collapsed ruins.
• Ophio and the Victorious Army confronted Angron at a dead end, where the soldiers attacked and then clung to him to immobilize him.
• Ophio activated his teleport beacon and returned to the battle lines while the twelve Victorious Army veterans stayed behind.
• The Victorious Army leader laughed at the struggling Angron as their overloaded antimatter furnace threatened to annihilate them all.

Orpheo’s forces unleashed a devastating explosion that appeared to kill Angron, leaving the World Eaters overwhelmed by the sudden loss of their gene-father. Kharn found Angron’s damaged weapons in the blast crater and wondered whether Angron had survived.

• Orpheo ordered his troops to withdraw, recover the fallen, and monitor the battlefield to confirm Angron’s death.
• The World Eaters felt their connection to Angron disappear, and Kharn returned to the blast site in grief.
• Anger Tai told Kharn that charging into the explosion would have killed him and reflected that Angron had spent his life enslaved.
• Kharn leapt into the crater and found Gorefather and Gorechild still faintly alive.
• Kharn picked up the weapons and wondered whether Angron might still be alive.

After the Ultramarines counted their devastating losses, Lorgar stopped the World Eaters from destroying Amatara by promising Khârn that Angron could be resurrected. Khârn agreed to sacrifice the planet, while Angron's lieutenant questioned the cost but joined the effort.

• Orfeo received the casualty report, confirmed the Ultramarines had fewer than two thousand battle-brothers left, and ordered them to hold until Guilliman's reinforcements arrived.
• Khârn and the World Eaters took control of the Conqueror's weapons to destroy Amatara, and Khârn killed a Word Bearers officer who tried to stop them.
• Lorgar froze the World Eaters and told Khârn that a ritual and adequate sacrifice could resurrect Angron; Khârn agreed to destroy Amatara.
• Lorgar ordered Khârn to gather the World Eaters and promised support from the Word Bearers and Blessed Sons to crush the planet's defenders.
• Angron's lieutenant questioned Lorgar about the cost of resurrection, then agreed to help Khârn destroy Amatara while privately doubting Lorgar's faith and judgment.

As the World Eaters and Word Bearers overwhelmed Amatara’s defenders, Orpheo prepared to make a last stand against Khârn and Argel Tal. Guilliman’s fleet arrived just as the planet still held, and Macragge’s Honour opened fire on the enemy ships.

• The World Eaters’ relentless assaults and indiscriminate orbital bombardments depleted the Ultramarines’ forces, leaving Orpheo’s adjutant to lament that they had not seen reinforcements from Macragge.
• Orpheo’s adjutant left the command center to fight, but Khârn killed him before Orpheo reached the front line.
• Argel Tal offered Orpheo surrender and warned him that the surrounded Ultramarines faced defeat, while Orpheo gathered the surviving warriors around him.
• A Warp rift opened near the Mandeville Point, and a thousand-ship fleet led by Macragge’s Honour arrived under Commander Marius Gage.
• Gage ordered the fleet to fire, and Macragge’s Honour concentrated its weapons on the damaged Conqueror until its void shields failed.

The Conqueror was destroyed after Gage ordered the final torpedo strikes, and Lotara Sarrin died as its Machine Spirit fell silent. The Ultramarines then fought the Word Bearers’ remaining ships while Gage launched a boarding assault on the Law of Truth, leaving Macragge's Honour under mounting pressure from the Hymn of the Three Saints and the Blessed Lady.

• Gage ordered the final torpedo strikes that broke apart the Conqueror, and Lotara Sarrin ejected Lhorke’s compartment before dying.
• The Conqueror’s wreckage began falling toward the planet, while the Law of Truth turned to engage Macragge's Honour.
• Gage sent Ultramarines boarding forces toward the Law of Truth as Word Bearers launched their own boarding attacks, sparking fighting across the ships.
• The Hymn of the Three Saints and the Blessed Lady overwhelmed Macragge's Honour with heavy fire as both fleets battled in the void.
• Macragge's Honour’s captain struggled to evade the enemy and exploit openings while its void shields neared collapse.

The Word Bearers pursued the damaged Macragge's Honour, believing the Ultramarines were nearly defeated, until a battle planet emerged from a vast Warp rift and devastated their fleet. The remaining Ultramarines focused on the Trisagion and the Blessed Lady while Lorgar remained on Amatara.

• Gage received the primarch's order and cleared a path for the secret weapon, prompting the Word Bearers to surround the Ultramarines fleet.
• A colossal Warp rift opened near the Mandeville Point, and a battle planet emerged into the star system.
• The Word Bearers' commander ordered his forces back to the Trisagion and the Blessed Lady, but a crewman warned that Lorgar was still on the surface.
• The battle planet fired tens of thousands of energy lances, destroying many Word Bearers warships and driving others to flee.
• Fleeing Word Bearers ships found Warp translation impossible at the disrupted Mandeville Point, and some were lost attempting to force a jump.
• The Ultramarines sent part of their fleet after the fleeing ships and concentrated the rest on the Trisagion and the Blessed Lady.